“Nothing is owed to us in life, not even the innocence of a blue sky. Great art is the art of thankfulness for the abundance of every moment. Writing is a Chinese variant of this thankfulness, a courtesy to life in its cloak of nothing, lined with love.”

“A few stars were approaching and in their brightness I glimpsed a fragment of your vanished soul – cheerful and frivolous, unforgettable.”

“What are they like, writers, in your mind: it may seem strange, but initially it’s not about writing. A writer is someone who struggles with the angels of solitude and truth. A confused struggle, without any clear conclusion.”

“It is as if the angels had just done their laundry and, owning no other wealth than love, they are always clothed in the same light, worn transparent from so many washings.”

“A painter is someone who wipes the windowpane between the world and us with light, with a rag made of light, soaked in silence.”

“In such blue beauty you sense the darkness into which the light will soon fall, and in this conjugal life of blue and black you find the one lesson of things that suits you, the proof of a certain excellence in this life where everything is given to us, every instant, blue with black, strength with hurt.”

“Life in society is when everyone is there and no one is present. Life in society is when everyone obeys what no one wants. Writing is a way of escaping this impoverishment, a variation on solitude like love or gambling – a principle of insubordination, a virtue of childhood.”

“A writer is anyone who follows only the truth of who they are, without ever relying on anything other than the poverty and solitude of that truth. In this respect, children and women in love are born writers.”

“Nothing is owed to us in life, not even the innocence of a blue sky. Great art is the art of thankfulness for the abundance of every moment. Writing is a Chinese variant of this thankfulness, a courtesy to life in its cloak of nothing, lined with love.”